Near East Side to get its grocery

Friday

A year after a deal to build a Near East Side grocery appeared dead, a Save-A-Lot discount store is taking shape along E. Main Street in a neighborhood desperate for a chain food store.

A year after a deal to build a Near East Side grocery appeared dead, a Save-A-Lot discount store is taking shape along E. Main Street in a neighborhood desperate for a chain food store.

That'll make Sidney Brooks happy. The 52-year-old S. Champion Avenue resident has to lug her groceries home on the bus after shopping at a Kroger store near Bexley, more than a mile away.

"It's more convenient," she said.

John Waddy, a Near East Area commissioner, drives more than a mile to German Village for his groceries. He figures he's more able to do that than many of his older and poorer neighbors.

"In a depressed area where there is so little, we have an opportunity to deliver food to individuals who can least afford expensive food" from corner groceries, said Waddy, also a local lawyer and developer.

Save-A-Lot focuses on urban neighborhoods. With a limited number of national brands and its own store brands, it advertises prices up to 40 percent lower than other grocery chains. Customers select products out of cases and bag their own groceries.

The grocery is scheduled to open by July, the centerpiece of a 60,000-square-foot retail and commercial development called Heritage Square Marketplace.

Developer Casto is marketing the project, which will include a new 12,000-square-foot retail building on the southwest corner of E. Main Street and Wilson Avenue.

A fence surrounds the Save-A-Lot site, a former Salvation Army store at 1179 E. Main St. that once had been a Kroger. Crews have been preparing the building for renovation. Jonathan Beard, president of the Columbus Compact Corp., the private, nonprofit developer that uses federal grants to revitalize the Near East Side, sued a Save-A-Lot franchisee, Lofino's Columbus Foods, when it withdrew from the deal last year. But Save-A-Lot is back on board and Lofino's is the licensee.

"There was broad agreement this was a great site for a store," Beard said. "Anytime you have a situation like that, ultimately reason wins out."

The construction of the $2.4 million Save-A-Lot will be heavily subsidized by tax dollars, including a $900,000 federal empowerment zone grant, and a loan of $199,999 from the Community Capital Development Corp., a private, nonprofit group funneling federal money the city received for the project.

Beard's group will lease the building to Save-A-Lot for 10 years, but Beard and the company refused to release how much the store will pay.

The Ohio Community Development Finance Fund, a nonprofit group providing money for projects serving poor populations, is loaning $1.1 million to retrofit the building as a grocery and providing a $100,000 community development state grant.

The City Council has approved a 10-year, 75 percent real-estate tax abatement and a two-year, 75 percent personal-property tax abatement that should save the store $232,175.

mferenchik@dispatch.com

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